Health information and technology: a transdisciplinary teaching and learning model

The present research focused on the question of how professionals from the field of information and from the field of technology can be prepared to deal with health-related problems, taking into account the basic concepts of technology, information, and health; the observation of curricular proposals; the analysis of health-related software and hardware; and the critical analysis of current literature. As the initial hypothesis, a transdisciplinary teaching and learning model was proposed considering four aspects: interaction among lecturers and students from different fields of knowledge; integration between the external context with the context from the educational institution; institutional conditions; and systematization of a teaching and learning project. To analyze this hypothesis, a qualitative method, the action-research, was adopted during one year in the offer of two courses, with 60 hours each, and the participation of 35 students. The proposed model was adequate to teach and learn technology and information in health, and emphasized relevant parameters to be considered in transdisciplinary educational contexts, such as linguistic competence, conceptual harmonization, ethical standards, the language of selected texts, and the relation between problems discussed in the educational and external contexts.